Mumbai: 25-year-old man was crushed to death under a metro girder on the Western Express Highway in Kandivli early on Friday morning. The deceased has been identified as Arman Ahmed Shaikh, from Varanasi, employed with J Kumar, the civil contractor appointed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to work on Metro Line 2A (Dahisar to DN Nagar). Shaikh was rushed to the civic-run Shatabdi Hospital, where he was declared dead by the doctors. The driver of the trailer which was transporting the girder is reportedly on the run.
Shaikh was driving an escort vehicle behind the trailer which was carrying the girder to Dahisar, police said. The girder, weighing at least 100 tonnes, was apparently not secured properly, as it fell on the escort vehicle, said Senior Inspector Raju Kasbe of Samta Nagar police station. While two other passengers escaped the crash by jumping out of the vehicle, Shaikh was crushed to death, he said.
According to the MMRDA, the trailer carrying the U-girder was separated from the puller after a rock joining pin broke, following which the girder fell on the escort vehicle deployed to monitor the trailer's movement on the highway.
Following the tragedy, the Samta Nagar Police station has filed a First Information Report (FIR) in the case. SI Kasbe said that the driver of the trailer had been booked under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code for causing death due to negligence (section 304A).
Shaikh lived in Malwani, Malad. Police said his family had been informed about the incident and was expected to reach Mumbai by Saturday.
MMRDA spokesperson Dilip Kawathkar said, "It is an unfortunate incident. We condole the death of the contractor’s employee and hope that all contractors will take the utmost care in the future." The authority said it would not tolerate such haphazard work which claimed lives.
In September, one worker died and another was injured in an accident in a tunnel shaft of the under-construction Mumbai Metro Line 3. The accident occurred on September 14, at a cross tunnel between SEEPZ station and the ramp at Sariput Nagar, at the northern end of the 33.5-km long underground corridor near Aarey Milk Colony.
According to a spokesperson of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC), a chunk of rock fell from the face of the tunnel and trapped the two labourers who were engaged in breaking a rock with a rock splitter.
In November 2017, a worker of Metro Line-7 (Andheri East to Dahisar East) died after being hit by a crane.
